one yellow star;
     How small it looks, away so far! 
     But soon, in the heaven’s shining blue,
     A thousand twinkle and blink at you,
     Like a thousand lamps in the sky so blue.

     And hush! a light breeze stirs the tree,
     And rocks, the birdies,—­one, two, three. 
     What a beautiful cradle, that soft, warm nest! 
     What a dear little coverlid, mamma-bird’s breast! 
     She’s hugging them close to her,—­tight, so tight
     That each downy head is hid from sight;
     But out from under her sheltering wings
     Their bright eyes glisten,—­the darling things! 
     I lean far out from my window’s height
     And say, “Dear, lovely world, good-night!

     “Good-night, dear, pretty baby moon! 
     Your cradle you’ll outgrow quite soon,
     And then, perhaps, all night you’ll shine,
     A grown-up lady moon!—­so fine
     And bright that all the stars
     Will want to light their lamps from yours. 
     Sleep sweetly, birdies, never fear,
     For God is always watching near! 
     And you, dear, friendly world above,
     The same One holds us in His love: 
     Both you so great, and I so small,
     Are safe,—­He sees the sparrow’s fall,—­
     The dear God watcheth over all!”

WHEN I WAS A LITTLE GIRL.

Our froggery.

“Turn back observantly into your own youth, and awaken, warm, and vivify the eternal youth of your mind.”—­Froebel.

When I was a little girl my sister and I lived in the country.  She was younger than I, and the dearest, fattest little toddlekins of a sister you ever knew.  She always wanted to do exactly as I did, so that I had to be very careful and do the right things; for if I had been naughty she would surely have been naughty too, and that would have made me very sad.

As we lived in the country we had none of the things to amuse us that city children have.  We couldn’t walk in crowded streets and see people and look in at beautiful shop-windows, or hear the street-organs play and see the monkeys do tricks; we couldn’t go to dancing school, nor to children’s parties, nor to the circus to see the animals.

But we had lovely plays, after all.

In the spring we hunted for mayflowers, and sailed boats in the brooks, and gathered fluffy pussy-willows.  We watched the yellow dandelions come, one by one, in the short green grass, and we stood under the maple-trees and watched the sap trickle from their trunks into the great wooden buckets; for that maple sap was to be boiled into maple sugar and syrup, and we liked to think about it.  In the summer we went strawberrying and blueberrying, and played “hide and coop” behind the tall yellow haycocks, and rode on the top of the full haycarts.  In the fall we went nutting, and pressed red and yellow autumn leaves between the pages of our great Webster’s Dictionary; we gathered apples, and watched the men at work at the cider-presses, and the farmers as they threshed their wheat and husked their corn.  And in the winter we made snow men, and slid downhill from morning till night when there was any snow to slide upon, and went sleighing behind our dear old horse Jack, and roasted apples in the ashes of the great open fire.